Sunday, July 30, 2017

[tcawirzd] Icons considered harmful

UI designers seem to like using icons on buttons (etc.) instead of text labels for ease of internationalization (because seemingly no need to translate a picture). However, a text label is much easier to search for help for (e.g. look for help with a web search engine) than an image, even for users unfamiliar with the language. It might be tricky for users unfamiliar with the orthography, but I suspect a huge proportion of the world can handle Latin orthography.

Buttons can be colored coded for ease of identification.

Often buttons with icons these days get pop-up text labels. We could interestingly reverse: pop up large high-resolution images to accompany text-labeled buttons.